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of his own word, so there will be at his appearing, the still more decisive and enrapturing testimony of his judicial sentence, that we form a part of that happy number, who are "waiting for the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ."

But what shall I say to those who are not prepared for the second coming of Christ? He comes then, to be "glorified in his saints and admired in all them that believe"-but to "punish with everlasting destruction them that know not God, and obey not the Gospel of his Son." Awful prospect! and as certain as it is awful! You take no pains to acquaint yourselves with the allperfect God: you refuse submission to the eternal Son of the eternal Father: you are content to live at a distance from Him who is the sovereign arbiter of your fate—in rebellion against his authority-in contempt of the salvation which he offers-in defiance of the judgment which he threatens. And intsead of believing what he declares, and doing what he commands, you cast all his declarations, and all his commandments behind your back. And perhaps you sneer at the men who have left you in "the broad way that leadeth to destruction," and betaken themselves to "the narrow way that leadeth unto life;" and make use, for the purpose of ridiculing them, of the very terms by which their divine Lord asserts their relation to him, and their preparation for his hea

venly kingdom, calling them believers and saints, as if your imagined reproach were not their honour and their glory in the sight of God. O persist not in this impious and destructive career. Repent, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out. Take refuge where alone it is to be found for any sinner, under the Redeemer's cross. And believing that he will come again, let your remaining days be devoted to the work of preparation for that all-interesting and all-momentous event.

491

SERMON XX.

ARDENT DESIRE FOR THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST.

1 COR. i. 7.

Waiting for the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.

IN discoursing on these words we have considered them as implying these three things—a firm conviction that Christ will come again-the habitual contemplation of that event-and diligent and faithful preparation for it.

IV. We now proceed to observe, in the fourth place, that they imply a decided and ardent desire for the second coming of Christ.

If we truly believe that Christ will come again, if his second coming be the object of our habitual thought and contemplation, and if we be conscious of being prepared, or of having the requisite meetness for it, it must on every principle of nature and of reason, be productive of this desire. The feeling is dictated by all our present experience, and by all our future prospects. There are evils from which that event alone can

emancipate us, and there are enjoyments to which that event alone can introduce us. And if it be a right thing to wish for deliverance from the one, and for the attainment of the other, then it is right to wish for the second advent of Christ because that is identified with both advantages. Nay, it will be as impossible for us to repress this desire or to be without it, as it is for us to take delight in enduring what gives us pain, or in foregoing what gives us satisfaction, when we are called to neither sacrifice by a sense of duty, or by the hope of ultimate and superior benefit. And not to experience it, and not to cherish it, would be to show that we are destitute of the common sensibilities of our nature, or that our convictions of the reality of the blessings we look for are slight and feeble, or that we have no proper sense of their value and importance, or that we have no conscious interest in them, and no personal fitness for them.

Those, indeed, who, though professing Christianity, have no spiritual discernment of its truths, and no experimental acquaintance with its power and its blessings, cannot easily enter into this sentiment, or understand either how it should be much fostered or how it should have much influence. They do not take any great concern in the second coming of the Saviour; it is with them rather a doctrine to which they have been accustomed to give a spe

culative assent, than a doctrine which they have embraced with the heart, as equally momentous and true. The world, besides, has got hold of their affections, and they are contented with it, or they rejoice in it; and dead to the superiority of that better world which lies beyond it, or impressed with the apprehension that heaven is still only offered to them and not accepted by them, and that, therefore, the change, come when it may, will be disastrous to them, they cannot wish for-they must rather deprecate, its arrival ; and this being the state of their own minds, they cannot sympathise with the emotions of those whose minds are in the opposite state, and are apt to consider the language which expresses a longing for it, as the language of a disordered fancy, or of an irrational enthusiasm. And yet there is nothing less fanciful, and nothing more rational, than the desire which they thus ridicule and deride. If a powerful, generous, and beloved friend has assured us that he is coming to visit our abode, and if his coming is to exhibit himself in a more attractive and interesting light than he ever assumed before, and to add in a high degree to our dignity, and safety, and happiness, what would be thought of us by men of the world, if we were so indifferent to the prospect, as to have no desire that our friend should actually come, and realize the promise on which he had taught us to rely? Would not they accuse

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